I'm trying to do a little research on what I should be researching...

I want to write a game where all the "business logic" is kept on the
server.  I want the user interface to be a regular swing application.

The few ideas and steps that come to mind are that I require a server
that can host instances of objects that the client then pokes at.
Which gives way to the fact that I need a way to get Java SE programs
to *on their own* contact this server and make these instantiation and
method calls.

So far a lot of what I've found with application servers (Sun, 9.0)
depends on the application being web-based or java web start based, and
this is not what I'm after.
Most of the resources I find also make no mention of how to get Java SE
programs talking to enterprise beans - which was one of my ideas...
JMS seemed to be too wrapped up in other purposes to seem right for
what I wanted to do, although the concept sure seemed appealing - once
again I just didn't understand how to get Java SE programs talking to
an application server...JNDI seems to be the problem there & with
beans.

Maybe I'm barking up the wrong trees here?  I'm having a bit of a
confusing time navigating the purpose of everything in Java.

Any suggestions and pointers to technologies, tutorials, web sites or
books would be great!